In an effort to adopt an integrated circuit (IC) ticketing system for the MRT system, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp will begin selling IC tokens at four MRT stations starting on Tuesday with the aim of eventually replacing the existing MRT cards.
The tokens with IC cards inside, resemble a NT$50 coin and will be sold at the MRT CKS Memorial Hall, Guting, Jiantan and Taipei City Hall stations starting on Tuesday, and will be rolled out to all other MRT stations by August, the corporation said.
"The magnetic cards are easily worn, whereas the IC tokens can be used more than 30,000 times. Besides, it's hard to forge, and will save passengers time when passing through the gates," said Lee Yuan-hsiang (
The corporation has adopted the tokens in order to operate the new-style Automatic Fare Collection gates that open like a door. The gates were introduced last year to replace the existing turnstile types of gates.
Passengers who purchase the new IC tokens will be required to enter and exit the stations through the new gates, although the existing magnetic cards can still be purchased and used, Lee said.
Meanwhile, Taipei Smart Card Corp said yesterday that the EasyCard, which is currently used in Taipei MRT stations and on buses, could be used on the Taiwan High Speed Rail system within three years.
According to General Manager Jason Lin (
"Using the current EasyCard system could save the corporation the time and money of setting up a new system, and it's convenient for passengers to travel around with only one card," Lin said yesterday at Taipei City Hall.
As the Ministry of Transportation has thrown its support behind the integration of the nation's ticketing systems, Lin said the plan is very likely to be carried out within three years, adding that the company is in discussions with the Taiwan Railway Administration regarding the use of the EasyCard system on their network.
Lin said that Taipei Zoo will allow visitors to use the EasyCard to pay its entrance fee beginning in June.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching